Working to keep your digital experiences secure

Adobe’s history is one of not only inventing and adapting amazing technology, but also making those same innovations easy to use. Over ten years ago, we took the complex world of public key infrastructure (PKI) & digital certificates, and in turn, made digital signing a one-click process on a PDF within Acrobat and Reader on your PC or Mac. So it naturally follows that yesterday Adobe continued this trend towards great technology made simple and announced that it had acquired leading electronic signature provider EchoSign.

EchoSign offers an easy-to-use, yet fully-featured, electronic signature service that allows users, from individuals to large enterprises, to easily upload documents, set up a signing workflow, and have recipients sign with a simple click-through process.

EchoSign has an impressive list of customers that include Delta, Nationwide, BT, WebEx, Aetna, and GE Capital, as well as a rich API and #1 rated integration to Salesforce.com, where clients like LinkedIn and Groupon have used EchoSign to help process sales contracts. Goodbye overnight delivery envelopes and faxes…hello contract closure in minutes!

We think that bringing together EchoSign’s ease of use with Adobe’s brand, reach, and trust in the document space makes for a perfect match. Our aim is to make electronic signatures the common way for people to sign documents.

This exciting announcement is the latest chapter in Adobe’s decade-plus history in electronic signatures. Where organizations used to permit users to fill out PDFs on their computer, but then require printing them out in order to sign them, organizations now can trust Adobe to provide a whole suite of capabilities to transform that last mile of the transaction into an electronic one.

And it’s that breadth of product offerings from Adobe that’s a critical part of the story. Our experience in this market, combined with in-depth customer engagements, partner relationships, and hands-on work with standards, show us that signatures and approvals are critical elements in practically EVERY workflow, across industries, regulatory environments, risk models, and legal frameworks. However, no one signature type or solution can address every requirement.

With the acquisition, Adobe now provides customers with the ability to not only simply approve tasks, but also easily sign contracts in a browser, sign with a digital certificate on the client, or certify documents in bulk on a server; whether online or offline; on the desktop, in the cloud, or on mobile; and no matter the local legal requirements or assurance needs of the transaction. When taken together with the electronic document creation, processing, and management capabilities that Adobe’s known for, no other company in the market can match this stem-to-stern set of capabilities.

All of these solutions are focused on one thing…improving the customer experience. If we can help you to easily conclude interactions with clients, save you time and resources, and conserve the planet at the same time…well, I’d call that a successful day’s work.

I look forward to sharing more about the EchoSign product integration in the weeks and months ahead…but for now: